DOH bares details on COVID-positive patients with travel history to India

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) revealed on Friday more information about the five COVID-19 positive individuals who have traveled from India before the travel ban from the South Asian country was enforced on April 29.

Of the five individuals who arrived from India prior to the travel ban and who had tested positive for COVID-19, the DOH said that four were Filipinos and one was an Indian national.

According to Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, the individuals arrived in the country from April 1 to 18, or before the travel ban was implemented on April 29, amid the surge of coronavirus cases in the south Asian country. The travel ban will end on May 14.

Vergeire said that two of them flew from Dubai, two flew from Doha, Qatar, and one came from Singapore. They tested positive for COVID-19 on their fourth to seventh day of arrival in the Philippines.

“We are in the process of retrieving the samples of these five positive travelers so we can subject them for whole genome sequencing,” she said in an online press briefing.

Vergeire also said that the five Filipino patients were among the 155 individuals who have had travel history from India for the month of April. This data from the Bureau of Quarantine is as of May 6.

She added that authorities are still trying to complete the details of all the 155 passengers including the flight manifesto of the five virus-positive patients.

Citing information from the BOQ, Vergeire said that of the 155 passengers, 135 are Filipinos, 15 were Indian nationals, three were British, one is American, and one is a Sri Lankan national.

Of the 155, 148 already tested negative for the virus while the test results of the two remaining travelers are still being verified.

Vergeire noted that the process of genome sequencing which determines if COVID-19 samples are positive of the variants of concern or variants under investigation normally takes a week. However, she said that the Philippine Genome Center is currently conducting whole genome sequencing using smaller machines, which can produce results in two to three days.

India first reported the threat of the B.1.617 variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in October last year.

After the travel ban issued on April 29, the Philippine government later expanded the travel restrictions to Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh which also reported the presence of the so-called “double mutant” variant.

The World Health Organization has categorized the variant as a “variant of interest” as it was found to have several mutations, including the E484Q and L452R.

Experts say that the E484Q mutation is similar to the E484K, called the “escape mutation,” as it helps the virus get past the body’s immune system. Meanwhile, the L452R was found by a Californian study to be an efficient spreader of the virus.

EDV